


The Documentation Of Harry Lily Potter: Year One

by everybodyhasroots (orphan_account)



Series: Female Harry Potter [1]
Category: Harry Potter (movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Always Female Harry Potter, Female Harry Potter, Hogwarts First Year, Most relationships are platonic, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-23 18:38:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16624328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/everybodyhasroots
Summary: On July 31st 1980, Harry Lily Potter opens her green eyes to a world that doesn’t deserve her, and so sets out on her life’s mission to save it.Or; a look at how the world would change if Harry Potter was a girl.





	The Documentation Of Harry Lily Potter: Year One

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Just so you know, this won’t be a chapter-by-chapter retelling of the original book. It will follow the general story of The Philosopher’s Stone, but I’ll be including and excluding different plot points as I please, as the aim of this is to explore how the story and character interactions would change if the boy who lived was the girl who lived. All other characters will be their canon gender, it’s just Harry who has been swapped up. Please enjoy, and remember all feedback, positive or negative, is always welcome and actively encouraged. Thank you! <3

Harry Lily Potter spends the first eleven years of her life alone.

The Dursleys provide a cold, colourless, clinical environment for her - endless days of bruised knees and soapy hands and impatient cracks from hard hands on her skin. Her aunt and uncle are cruel and impatient, expectant and resolutely normal, thanks very much, whereas Harry - well. She is seventy-five pounds of messy black hair, defiant eyes and a colourful curse muttered under the folds of her breath that would be sure to earn her a whack round the head with a rolled-up newspaper. Her extended family were cardboard cut-outs, prim and groomed and trimmed, all oiled-up hair and powdered cheeks and smart clothes - and there, in the back of a fuzzy family photo, a close examiner would see the changeling child, the worm in the apple, the pale ghost in oversized clothes wandering the halls with lopsided glasses and an ugly scar beneath her spiky fringe.

She remembers sometimes, cut-off recollections that cough their way up through her memories like pictures stuttering through a motion reel; at age four, she sits on aunt Petunia's bony knee, wriggling and groaning as the latter tries to wrestle her hair into submission for her first day of primary school and then pinches her sharply on the nape of her neck between two filed fingernails like it's _her_ fault her hair is a beast of it's own nature. When Harry was little, she liked to pretend the black mess was another entity entirely that had merely taken up residence atop her head; a seething, fanged monster that would give her family a well-deserved bite every now and then. She remembers making aunt Petunia a mothers’ day origami flower in Reception, only for her aunt to screw up her face and crumple the meticulously folded lily in one smooth, manicured hand and hiss, “I’m not your mother.” She remembers the old cherry tree in the back yard - one time, Harry had been picking blossoms from the branches and somehow, impossibly, found herself at the very top, clinging to the branches scarce thicker than her fingers, and Uncle Vernon took an axe to the tree the next day.

There are flashes; she thinks, once, she might even have tried to adapt to Privet Drive's nothing-y atmosphere, kept her head down and scrubbed those kitchens tilers till her fingers were raw, but it is a time long forgotten. She submits to their work, but not quietly.

The first letter comes on a perfectly ordinary day.

The parchment was yellowing, the ink brilliant green, the wax seal cherry-red and hard and cold under her finger as she ran the pad over it gently, wondrously. The envelope, shining in colour against the cool cream walls and white carpet and grey kitchen door, was soft to the touch, and Harry traced the narrow, curly penmanship sprawled across the back:

_Harry L Potter,_  
The Cupboard Under The Stairs,  
4 Privet Drive  
Little Whingeing  
Surrey 

How could anyone know about her cupboard? Harry’s frown caused her glasses to slip down her nose, but she figured with a heavy-heartedness it must be Dudley playing a cruel trick; at least she could admire he wrote everything with correct spelling, for once. He must have been quite dedicated to this joke. To purchase this new yellowing envelope (all of the ones aunt Petunia owned were crisp, white and kept in a locked drawer with the silver), meticulously write out Harry’s full address upon in in neater penmanship than she could ever see his fat little fingers accomplishing, sticking a stamp on it, then posting it, knowing he’d have to wait a few days to see the joke land home... It all seemed rather a lot of effort for Dudley, who’d always been more partial to simply yanking her skirt down in public or socking her in the stomach so hard she threw up. With that distant, curious glimmer of hope making a cautious reappearance, Harry gathered the rest of the mail from the mat and walked back through to the kitchen,

With her letter in one hand and the rest of the mail in the other, she stumbled around, trance-like. She handed a thin envelope to Uncle Vernon and put the junk advertising down on the table, and then, heart beating faster than it had any right to, Harry turned over the letter and broke the wax seal.

“Mum, dad, Harry’s got a letter!”

Before she could react, Dudley had moved faster than she could have thought possible and whipped the envelope out of her gaping hands so fast she felt it slice; a hot swipe of pain shot through her finger and blood welled at the paper cut, but she barely noticed as she watched Dudley thrust the letter at his father.

“It’s mine!” Harry protested furiously, not above stamping her foot and screaming like Dudley having a temper tantrum if it meant she could read her letter, but her uncle merely chuckled, the sound reverberating through this thick, hammy throat.

“Yours?” he mocked, small eyes glinting in wet amusement. “Who’d be writing to _you_?” He turned the letter back over, and something very strange happened.

With a hiss as though he’d been struck, Vernon dropped the letter onto the table; his right eye began twitching nervously, and his pasty skin went a nasty brick colour as he gasped out, “Petunia! Petunia!”

“What is it?” Harry’s aunt moved swiftly, coming to stand over her husband’s meaty shoulder, but she too, upon seeing the seal, reacted most oddly. In contrast to Vernon, her face went white, and she clutched at her throat as though she’d been robbed of air. “Vernon - oh Vernon!”

The two stared at each other, seemingly paralysed in her horror; Harry saw an opportunity and dived, hand grasping for the half-torn envelope, but most unfortunately, this seemed to break her uncle out of his trance. With an odd gasping noise, his hand came up to meet her mid-air, and he shoved her back so hard she toppled into the fridge. He clenched and unclenched his fist over the letter, effectively crumpling it, and then croaked, “you two. Out. Get out.”

“What?!” Dudley asked in outrage, his stupid piggy face contorting. “I want to read the letter!”

“ _Out!_ ” Uncle Vernon bellowed, and abruptly seized both children by their collars and half-dragged, half-threw them both out into the hallway, door slamming behind him. Dudley pressed himself to the keyhole, elbowing Harry in the ribs when she tried to get there before him, so she lowered herself to the crack under the door.

She could only see the feet, of course - uncle Vernon wore thick navy socks with a hole in the left big toe, and they paced back and forth, whilst Aunt Petunia’s stockinged feet were motionless.

“What are we supposed to do?” came her aunt’s voice in a fearful, buzzing whisper. 

“We should - we should ignore them,” croaked Vernon. “Yes - if we ignore, they won’t know-”

“They already know, Vernon!” hissed Petunia frightfully. “Look at this! ‘Cupboard under the stairs’ - do you think they’re watching the house?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised, I’ll tell you that,” Vernon replied darkly. “Goodness knows what those lot get up to - though shouldn’t you know, what with your sister-”

“Yes, yes, all right,” snapped Petunia, annoyance displacing fear. “You know perfectly well I distanced myself from all that.”

“Hmph.” Harry’s Uncle appeared to take a few deep breaths. “Yes. All right. We’ll ignore the fools then, yes? If we don’t give them an answer, they’ll have to let us alone.”

A silence followed, and a second later, Harry heard footsteps approaching; she was just quick enough to get off the floor and duck into the living room before the door opened, but Dudley, slower both physically and mentally, was not so lucky, and when Vernon opened the door, he growled and smacked his son upside the head - though not nearly as hard as he would have done Harry.

She pressed herself against the cool living room wall, breathing fast. Uncle Vernon had mentioned Petunia’s sister - that _had_ to be Harry’s mother, didn’t it? Petunia had never mentioned another sister, nor Vernon, nor his equally repulsive sister, Marge. Did Harry’s mother have something to do with whoever had sent her that letter? And what did Vernon mean by ‘those people?’ He’d never been above petty discrimination, and often came back from work pulling his hair out and mumbling vaguely and angrily about ‘the Jews’ - was it possible her mother had belonged to some kind of minority her aunt and uncle found displeasing?

She’d get her answer soon enough, though later than she’d have liked; when, halfway through a sleepless night in a shack in the middle of the ocean, four heavy knocks sounded o her door.


End file.
